What does it cost?

Why are Exclusive Provider Agreements bad?

Despite the FCC making exclusive provider agreements illegal in 2008, many buildings continue this illegal practice.

It would be one thing if these exclusive providers were providing a modern service; but locking buildings down whilst providing a service that was laughable in the 1990’s is just insulting.

Exclusivity is plain simple bad business – the building owner often picks up a percentage of your monthly invoice as payment to keep out the competition but the tenant suffers.

When the carrier or ISP is kept on their toes, they invest into their infrastructure and treat the customers with the courtesy they deserve. Allowing a provider to obtain exclusive access to a multi-tenant building in many cases dooms those tenants to yesteryears technology and provider than can just abuse its customers because they have no-where else to go.

Some buildings take a different tactic by leveraging ridiculous fees to providers to enter their building. This is done to make it exorbitantly expensive for other providers to enter the building and so will fail to be approved by the provider.

There is no reason for your building owner or management company to charge for provider. They are there to serve its tenants, picking up commission payments to stifle competition is directly working against the tenants interests.

What can be done?

If you are in a building that prevents you from choosing the providers that come to your building then you can start by telling your building owner/landlord that you want choice. You can also involved your residents association and also file complaints with the FCC and FTC:

FCC Complaints Office https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

FTC Complaints Office https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/

You can refer to this copy of the FCC’s ruling on exclusive provider agreements FCC Exclusive Telecom Contracts Ban

What is Yomura Fiber doing about this?

In the buildings we bring service, we don’t request exclusivity, you’re the customer – we want you to choose. We’ll keep your service fast and optimal whilst our customer service team will treat you with dignity and courtesy.

Yomura Fiber works on month-to-month contracts, if you’re not happy with our service you are free to cancel without being stung for a termination fee.

We view exclusive contracts as destructive to providers and customers. We’ll do our best to provide you with the best service on the market but there are going to be times when we are not the best fit for you. If you were forced to buy service from us and we could not satisfy your needs then that wouldn’t benefit you or us. By giving you choice, you have the right to move to a provider that meets your needs.

How can I get real broadband?

First if you are within a Yomura Fiber area, register your community with us – we’ll reach out to your building owner to see if we can help.

Second talk to your building owner/landlord try to get them see reason. Some will just see the paltry commission cheque they’ll get from you buying services from their exclusive provider and decide the few dollars from them is worth more than your satisfaction.

Third talk to your residents association and garner support to get this exclusive agreement recinded.

Fourth file complaints with the FCC and FTC.

If all else fails

If all else fails and you’re within a Yomura Fiber area then there are chances we can reach you by radio. We have a small window mounted receiver that just attaches to the inside of your window and will provide high-speed access (100-500Mbps).

Tennessee House Bill 1045

Tennessee House Bill 1045 was torpedoed by Tennessee Senate Committee. This Bill proposed to allow counties and municipalities to make use of their infrastructure to provide high-speed Internet access to surrounding cities where only low performance services are available.

Read the full bill here: TN 2018-03-SB1045

Why is this important?

When network operators fail to bring modern services to an municipality then that area loses out to areas with high speed services. This Bill proposed to allow cities to address these failures by working amongst themselves for the benefit of their communities.

If network operators fail to address the needs of the community it serves, then the onus falls onto the community to find its own solutions. There are many examples of successful deployments like Greenlight Networks in NC. They are a city owned network that rolled out gigabit across the city of Wilson and Pinetops. They asked commercial operators to modernise existing services but when they were ignored. The city raised funding via bonds and took the matter into their own hands. Today these two rural cities have gigabit broadband, cable TV and phone service from a city owned company.

What is Yomura Fiber’s Position?

Despite being a commercial network operator, Yomura Fiber believes that community owned networks have a critical role. They fill the void where commercial operators have failed to deploy or have decided that the market is not lucrative enough to invest further funds.

We are actively supporting cities who are stuck with low speed, legacy networks and want a modern gigabit service in their city.

We are working with cities to deploy a fresh build or taking over existing infrastructure and modernising it. We can also partner to expand your network beyond your current boundaries with a public-private partnership.

If your city is in this position then make contact with us.

The FCC has published their order in the Federal Register ordering that Net Neutrality will end on 23rd April 2018:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/02/22/2018-03464/restoring-internet-freedom

At Yomura Fiber, this does not change anything. Our position on Net Neutrality remains the same:

• We will not throttle content
• We will not prioritise content
• We will not block content (except where required by law) but will be noted on our Transparency Report
• We won’t mine your traffic
• We won’t modify traffic passing through our network

If you are not a Yomura Fiber customer, ask your ISP for their position on Net Neutrality and whether they make these commitments to treating your traffic professionally.

When we started building Yomura Fiber, there were very few gigabit providers on the market. Some have delivered on their promises others started and then failed to deliver.

If your provider’s gigabit deployment has stalled or failed to be completed, then reach out and we’ll look at options to pickup the pieces.